Thursday, September 29, 2016

Yes, I knew old Jack DuFarge. He was something of a celebrity around these parts, so everyone knew him. He lived in that old ruin of a house outside of town, out near where the village of Wisecombe used to be before it was infested with that never-ending swarm of ladybugs. Yes, it's pronounced Wisk'm, not Wise-comb; you can always tell whether someone is from around here by how they pronounce it. Because of the house, and because he used to peddle spells and luck charms, DuFarge was called the Wizard of Wisecombe. He was a mountebank, of course. The local farmers went to him for everything -- love charms, luck spells, healing potions -- but in reality, as I know for a fact, the only thing he actually knew how to do was put weather in bottles.

Superstition is such a tough weed, it can even grow in this day and age! Everybody is looking to believe anything that can solve their problems and bring comfort to their lives; promise them sorcery and they'll come running. I've tried a few times to convince people that he was really a charlatan, and it never works. They'll talk about how he managed to find the Sullyrood boy who fell down the well, or how he saved the Mablethrop apple orchard from the rotting disease, or, more ridiculously, how he revived Dave Haythorne's last cow, Millie, after it had died. But the one story that always comes up, that they always take as the definitive proof, is the one that makes my point. At some point in the discussion, they'll say, "Oh, but wait, you can't deny that Jenny Shay married Simon Caster, now can you?" That's a tale I know a lot about, as it happens, and there was no magic in it at all.

It was about twenty years ago. Jenny, who is my second cousin, was a wonderfully beautiful girl -- blonde hair, blue eyes. The boys were always looking at her. She had a head on her shoulders, too. She developed a crush on Simon, though, a sulky and quiet boy with dark hair and dark eyes. But he never seemed to notice her. And I guess that's the sort of thing that makes even intelligent girls indulge in a bit of superstition, because she went up the road to Wisecombe one day and knocked on Jack DuFarge's door.

That house has been in a dilapidated state for as long as anyone can remember. If you go up there today, you'll see that the front gate is hanging by a single hinge, the pavement up to the house is has been broken by the grass, and the paint on the front door is coming off in long, ugly strips. It looked exactly the same when I was a boy. People used to talk about how it was haunted by ghosts, who would bang the shutters when people passed by. It never happened to me. I imagine some country bumpkin was passing one day while the 'Wizard' was bottling the wind and mistook it for a ghost. Then the story spread everywhere, because people will believe anything.

Jenny told DuFarge her plight and asked him for a love philtre. Usually at this point the old charlatan would give a long spiel about how love spells were dangerous and that they often did not work in the way one wished, so that they should only be used in the greatest need. You know, the kind of thing salesmen say to drive up the price when faced with desperate buyers. But perhaps Jenny struck him as more intelligent than most, or perhaps even he was touched by the appeal of a pretty and earnest face, because this time he gave no such speech. He went into another room and came back with a little cobalt blue bottle that said, IODINE, and, after wiping the dust off of it, handed it to her.

"You'll need to get him alone," he said, "preferably in a shaded area, and then pour out this bottle on the ground. If there is any chance that he will ever love you, you will know."

So Jenny took the bottle and by the end of the week, she and Simon were courting. She had asked him up to the Mablethrop apple orchard on some pretense or other, and then poured out the bottle, to be sure. And everyone takes it to be 'magic' this and 'love spell' that. But, honestly, I'm sure what he did was just give her a bit of bottled spring day. If you put a young man and beautiful young woman together in an apple orchard on a fine spring day, the light shining as if through crystal and the scent of distant rain on the air, you will never need magic to get results.

In any case, that would probably have been the end of it, and it would take its place with Millie the cow in the background of the Wizard of Wisecombe's legend, except that Jenny Shay's father hated the entire Caster family.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

As Xenophon turns to Agesilaus's inner virtues, he begins with reverence for divine things. So great was Agesilaus's respect for the gods that people trusted his oaths before the gods more than they trusted the normal ties of friendship. Religious piety is consistently, throughout Xenophon's work, treated as a very practical virtue, and this work is far from being any exception. Piety here is regarded as necessary to a general because it is a component of trustworthiness.

Book IV

In book IV we consider the virtue of justice (dikaiosyne), as exhibited in matters of money. No one ever accused Agesilaus of profiting by fraud. On the contrary, he is continually praised for his generosity to others. Not only did Agesilaus pay debts of justice, he paid debts of gratitude, as well, and in both cases he paid back more than he owed.

Book V

Agesilaus was also not enslaved to pleasures, avoiding immoderate drinking, eating, and sleeping, as well as sexual looseness; nor is this simply a matter of intensive discretion, since virtually everything he did was public. Xenophon insists in particular that these kinds of victories are greater victories than those Agesilaus had over his enemies; many men who can defeat external foes cannot defeat these internal ones.

While this book provides some of the most explicit statement, the emphasis on Agesilaus as willing to endure ponos, hard work, is a consistent point throughout the entire text; he will later be praised (IX.3) as philoponos, a lover of toil.

Book VI

In addition, Agesilaus exhibited manliness or courage, andreia, as well as wisdom, sophia. The sign of his courage was that he did not hesitate to fight even the strongest enemies, and when he did so, he did not hesitate to be on the front line. The wisdom Xenophon attributes to Agesilaus here is clearly that sort of wisdom that goes with courage in battle -- it is the military leader's tactical sagacity that serves to support, and is supported by, fortitude in battle, and which helps to spread it to others. By learning to make use of his advantages, he was able to turn even the strengths of his opponents against them. Thus he became both impressive to his enemies and a source of strength to his friends and allies.

Book VII

All of these virtues are tied up in his love of city, philopolis, which his every action exhibited (VII.1):

To speak briefly, we all know that when Agesilaus thought he would be serving his fatherland he never shirked toil, never shrank from danger, never spared money, never excused himself on the score of bodily weakness or old age; but believed that it is the duty of a good king to do as much good as possible to his subjects.

He served the laws and customs (nomoi) of the city. He was not afraid to praise even his enemies if they benefited the city and he treated all citizens, regardless of his disagreement or agreement with them, as people to stand by in times of trouble. He also stood for the rights of the Greek cities generally, so if it is honorable to love the Greeks, he has that honor; and if it is honorable to oppose the Persians who sowed so much discord among the Greeks, he has that honor, as well.

Book VIII

Book VIII gives us the social side of the king, in a flurry of virtue-words. Agesilaus was also gracious (eucharis). He was not boastful (megalauchos), but always was familially affectionate (philostorgos) and ready to help (therapeutikos) towards his friends. He liked to chat, but was always willing to work with those who faced serious issues, and as he was hopeful (euelpis), generous (euthymos), and cheerful (hilaros), people flocked to him. Nonetheless, he also had a high-mindedness (megalognomosyne) in matters touching Greek affairs, so that he could not be turned aside from what was good for the Greeks, and he had a profound simplicity of life.

Book IX

The end of Book VIII had begun a contrast between Agesilaus, as an ideal Greek, and the Persians, and Book IX continues it in force -- a somewhat different view than we get in other works, some of which are at least partly devoted to praising Persian heroes. But Agesilaus, of course, was a major rival to the Persians, and Xenophon implies that he could have conquered the Persian Empire if he had not put the needs of his city first, so the Persian Great King serves as a sort of equal and opposite to the Spartan king. Interestingly, Xenophon thinks the public nature of Agesilaus's displays of virtue is a thing to be said in his favor: "Agesilaus delighted to be constantly visible, believing that, whereas secrecy was becoming to an ugly career, the light shed lustre on a life of noble purpose."

The complete list of his virtues: piety (III), justice (IV), moderation (V – the virtue is unnamed in the text; it is tied to piety. See Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates p. 101), courage, wisdom (VI), love of the city (VII), gracefulness (VIII). The center of his virtues is courage – no surprise, given II: 12-13. Courage is discussed in the same chapter with wisdom. There are 11 chapters in the work as a whole; chapter VI is doubly central.

As the post goes on to note, this list of virtues is similar to the list of Socratic virtues in the Memorabilia, raising the question of how the two are related.

* At the end of Book VIII, Xenophon affirms the importance of holding the soul inviolate against the assault of wealth, pleasure, and fear; this is exactly parallel to the progression in Books IV, V, and VI. Thus one can see love of the gods (Book III) as providing a foundation for his freedom from vice (Books IV-VI), which is linked to love of one's city (Book VII), all of which is adorned by a gracious and cheerful manner (Book VIII). This provides a perfect profile of the great Greek man, which Xenophon brings into sharper relief by contrasting it with the Persian (Books VIII and IX), whose great weakness is not having a life conducive to love of city, and therefore to true civilization, which requires it.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

One of my more popular posts here at "Siris" is the 2010 post Immanuel Kant's Guide to a Good Dinner Party, in which I gave a summary of the basics of Kant's discussion of dinner parties in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. It was a bit of a lark post rather than anything fully serious, but I hope it has led a lot of philosophers, whether faculty or grad students, to take into account a side of Kant, and his ethics, that is often overlooked. (There are a few people who had previously looked at Kant's account of dinner parties; see, for instance, Alix Cohen's The Ultimate Experience: Kant on Dinner Parties. I wasn't aware of her article when I did my post directly from Kant, but Cohen is one of the world's top scholars when it comes to Kant's Anthropology, so it's not surprising that she had already seen the importance Kant gives to dinner parties.)

Debate without dogmatism.
Respect and enjoyment.
Civility and sociability.

These are the goals of the Kantian Dinner Party Initiative, a new project which aims to provide a forum where members of diverse communities can engage with timely topics in a respectful and democratic fashion.

The dinners, which will be conducted according to rules laid out by 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, will include a maximum of nine guests, including a presiding host who ensures an open, inclusive and flowing conversation. Guests are asked to conduct themselves in a manner that ensures that "mutual respect and benevolence always shine forth." And, in an effort to engender trust, guests are also asked not to repeat anything shared during the dinner party.

The project, which was funded by a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, is coordinated by Marquette University graduate student Anthony Lanz, alumnus Charles Dobbs and Dr. Ryan Patrick Hanley, Mellon Distinguished Professor of Political Science.

They have a bit more at the link. I wish the Kantian Dinner Party Initiative the best of luck in their endeavor, and hope that this is the start of a long, and often-copied, tradition.

David Shoemaker has a very interesting post at "PEA Soup" on cruel jokes and insult comics. In it he suggests that cruelty sometimes makes intended jokes not funny at all -- it doesn't just outweigh reasons to find them funny, it ends up being incompatible with (at least many) reasons to find them funny.

This is actually fairly similar to a position that is put forward by Alexander Gerard in An Essay on Taste:

Objects conceived to be in any of these ways incongruous, always gratify the sense of ridicule: but they may excite, at the same time, a more important feeling, which, by occupying the mind, prevents our attending to the incongruity, or extinguishes the sentiment thence resulting, as soon as it begins to rise. Enormous vice, though of all things the most incongruous to the natural system of our minds, is never esteemed ridiculous. Pain or misery is never in itself ridiculous; it can become such only by being accidentally connected with unsuitable circumstances, and by failing to excite pity so intense as may swallow up the ludicrous sensation.

(The 'sense of ridicule' is Gerard's name for what we nowadays would usually call the 'sense of humor'. It is, in his own words, the "sense which perceives, and is gratified by the odd, the ridiculous, the humorous, the witty; and whose gratification often produces, and always tends to, mirth, laughter, and amusement.") Thus Gerard's view is that an object that is incongruous in certain ways will naturally stimulate mirth, laughter, and amusement, but that the object can simultaneously produce a sentiment that impedes this expression, and that one possible case is when the object that is incongruous also elicits strong moral disapproval. Things that inspire strong pity can have a similar effect. Gerard at several points also indicates that the sense of ridicule might in a number of different kinds of cases simply intensify the sentiments of other inner senses, like our sense of imitation (which is more or less our sense of how realistic or unrealistic a representation is).

Beattie has a similar account, although somewhat more complicated because he distinguishes the ludicrous (incites laughter simply) from the ridiculous (incites contemptuous or disapproving laughter). In "On Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition", he says:

It would seem then, that those absurdities in ourselves or others, which provoke the disapprobation of the moral faculty, cannot be ludicrous because in a sound mind they give rise to emotions inconsistent with, and far more powerful than, that whereof laughter is the outward indication.

To a certain point, moral disapproval changes the ludicrous to the ridiculous (as when we have a mocking attitude to a wicked character on the stage), but beyond that point, when the wrong is monstrous, people of sound mind cannot find it humorous because "moral disapprobation is a more powerful emotion than laughter" and when they are inconsistent, the stronger makes the weaker impossible.

One could argue for a slightly different view, though, which is that the sense of humor, itself, is actually a fairly minimal thing -- our ability to recognize the odd or incongruous -- and that what we usually think of as mirth or amusement is actually a complex response. So our sense of whether something is a good joke or not actually depends on how it affects a number of our 'inner senses'. The sense of novelty is a good example here. Novelty is obviously a major component in a lot of humor; some jokes rely heavily on it and even old tried-and-true jokes often need to seem fresh in some way if they are to do more than induce a smile or small chuckle. So some humorous response is not merely the sense of humor, but also tangled up in the surprise or shock arising from our sense of something's novelty. Similar things can be said about the sense of imitation or realism, since really great jokes often have not just oddness and freshness but also that air of 'that's way too true'. And it's not at all implausible to argue that this could also be true of the sense of morals, or sense of virtue, as Gerard calls it -- our response is shifted from mirth and amusement to disapproval by things that are too far out of moral bounds. In an account like this, the expression of the sense of humor would be more or less the same; it's just that the overall emotional response would be different because of the way other 'senses' contribute.

I didn't see the presidential debate last night, but there seems to be a considerable confusion over who 'won' it; I have seen a considerable amount of angsting, and a considerable amount of bravado, from both sides, while a look at the actual polling numbers in response to the debate gives an equally muddled view. Now, the first thing to grasp is that the purpose of political debates (and any other debates not in actual debate contests), at least in principle, is to inform, not to 'win', and it's very hazy to determine what counts as a 'win' when you have no scoring system for the debate itself. But the general idea of 'winning' a debate is that of whether it left good or bad impressions on those it reached, by and large, and that, while still slippery, is less hazy. I re-post the brief discussion below, from 2004, about the way in which who 'won' is a soft fact that depends on things that happen after the debate. This is actually, incidentally, one of the reasons Hillary Clinton has always done well in debates; she's one of the few politicians today who grasps the fact that a debate is less about what what you say and do and more about the what it lets you give your supporters to hammer the other side with until the next debate -- it's one of the things that made her stand so well against Obama, who is a far better speaker but who also kept being outmaneuvered after debates. (As I said, I didn't see the debate, but the fact that Clinton supporters are slow with coming up with any such hammers suggests that her performance was unusually weak, and that she may have made the error of covering old ground rather than giving her supporters something new to work with. But, of course, nothing but time will tell.)
*****************

By 'soft fact' I do not mean the sort of excuse for a fact that often passes in politics. I mean instead a technical term in philosophy of time: a 'soft fact' is a fact some of whose truth conditions occur only after the fact itself. If we think of evaluations of good and bad as being factual evaluations, we can see some rough examples of the sort of thing that's meant. For instance, if something happens that radically changes your life, it can often be uncertain until other things happen whether it was a bad happening or a good happening. Indeed, it might sometimes be the case that what seems bad at the time turns out to be one of the best things that has ever happened to you, or vice versa, because of what comes after.

I think it's important to recognize that in a certain sense, who wins or loses a presidential debate is a soft fact; we cannot, strictly speaking, determine the matter until well after the debate because the fact of the matter is, as it were, still pending. When we think of who 'won' the debate these days, we usually have in mind who appeared better to those who watched the full debate. However, the television appearance at the time is not everything that needs to be kept in mind when judging whether the debate was won or lost, because it is not the only medium in which the debate reaches people. There is, of course, the radio version at the time, and that can give different impressions; there are also the transcripts on the internet, and reading can potentially give yet another impression of the debate; and there are radio and television clips, and newspaper summaries, afterward. All of these, even the things that are reaching people well after the debate itself is actually over, are as it were the debate itself, still propagating through society. In addition, memories of the debate fade and change as other things happen (e.g., something that might not seem annoying in one debate might become annoying if it occurs in all the debates, thus adversely affecting judgment of the first debate). There are a lot of factors that need to be kept in mind. Who wins or loses the presidential debate actually depends on the sum effect of all this. Things can get surprising. It is how the debate affects the whole race that determines who won and who lost; victory and defeat in a presidential debate is a soft fact. This is not primarily 'spin' (although certainly there's always that) but is due to the simple fact that presidential debates have effects that are much more extensive than just the first impressions of television viewers (or radio listeners).

I suspect there are lots of soft facts in politics, even of the technical philosophical kind....

Monday, September 26, 2016

Xenophon's Agesilaos, or Agesilaus, is sometimes considered the first genuine biography. As with many of Xenophon's works, it is concerned with the requirements for great leadership.

People have occasionally questioned the authenticity of the work, particularly of the last book, on the grounds that it seems to have more rhetoric and less of Xenophontic simplicity than other works by Xenophon; but such suggestions have tended to be in the minority. The first two books are more or less excerpts from Xenophon's Hellenica (Xenophon's history of the last part of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath).

Agesilaus II (c. 440 - c. 360) was an unusual Spartan king. It was not originally expected that he would ever be king. He was born the younger son of Archidamus II, and, moreover, he was born lame, with one leg shorter than the other. He was short and physically unimpressive. But coming to the throne by happenstance at a crucial time, he became highly popular among the Spartans and extremely powerful throughout Greece. Xenophon knew him personally and served under him for several campaigns.

Book I

Xenophon gives his reason for writing the work right at the beginning:

I know how difficult it is to write an appreciation of Agesilaus that shall be worthy of his virtue and glory. Nevertheless the attempt must be made. For it would not be seemly that so good a man, just because of his perfection, should receive no tributes of praise, however inadequate.

Thus there is no pretension of evenhandedness here; the point is to praise Agesilaus for his virtues and his achievements, because he was a good man. And we begin with context -- he is a man from an excellent family in an excellent city, chosen by that city to be its king. having recently become king, Agesilaus is faced with a challenge: Persia was preparing to invade Greek lands again. Agesilaus proposed a counter-invasion to nip this in the bud, and the proposal was enthusiastically accepted, particularly as it would mean that Persia, for once, would be the scene of the Persian-Greek showdown.

The Persian governor, Tissaphernes, tried to hold Agesilaus with proposal of an armistice until he could get reinforcements, but Agesilaus was pleased to discover the offer fraudulent -- it put his invasion entirely in the right. Tissaphernes expected that Agesilaus would build a vengeance strike against himself, and prepared accordingly, but in fact Agesilaus continued to be levelheaded and instead worked on systematic conquest of wealthy and strategic cities. Out of this conquered wealth, Agesilaus richly rewarded all of his friends, which, of course, led to others working very hard to be his friends. But Agesilaus, taking the long view, also recognized that these lands needed to provide not only the temporary wealth of looting but a consistent and easily held supply base. For this reason he actively treated prisoners of war well and made sure, whenever he conquered a city, that he could claim to have liberated it, by making penalties less harsh and the laws more free. In order to build a cavalry, which was essential for the terrain, he obligated the horse-breeders to supply it, and he set in place a policy freeing from obligation to serve in the cavalry any wealthy horse-breeder who would provide a rider and arms. This made powerful locals active supporters of his cavalry-building. Meanwhile he trained his army, guided by the three principles Xenophon says provide for military success: reverence to the gods, active practice as a military, and obedience to command. And success Agesilaus certainly had before the Spartans called him back to deal with an anti-Spartan confederation of Greek cities.

Book II

Xenophon has no patience for people who praise generals for fighting forces greater than their own -- while it may sometimes be necessary, only an idiot does it freely and deliberately. Agesilaus comes against the confederates with a large and well trained army with considerable morale and military pride from their prior fighting. Xenophon thinks that Agesilaus could have done better tactically, but he nonetheless still showed valor and tactical care, guaranteeing victory to his army.

Even a competent king cannot eliminate all possibility of disasters, and Xenophon seeks to absolve Agesilaus of any blame in less fortunate happenings, such as a new anti-Spartan confederation or slave revolts. By this point, Agesilaus was aging rather severely and no longer able to take an active part in fighting, so he turned his mind to the second most important thing Sparta needed for her protection: money, which he began to gather by diplomatic means from both allies and defeated foes.

Additional Notes

* Xenophon's praise of Sparta for unbroken continuity in its line of kings is not a minor note -- stability of government is something Xenophon consistently regards as one of the most important questions of politics throughout his work.

* The claim that Agesilaus was still a youth when he became a king has baffled scholars through the ages -- Agesilaus would have been in his forties by that time, and Xenophon could hardly have been ignorant of that fact. Some have suggested that a 'not' had dropped out at some point; then the passage might be read as suggesting that Agesilaus, although not a youth and still new to politics, took admirable initiative in a time of crisis.

* Books I and II are basically background, dealing with external matters. Xenophon's primary interest, however, is virtue, and it is to this that he turns in Book III.

Caveats

For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.